You can’t have good policies and a bad worldview. You can’t hate God and still do good to your fellow man. When you tear virtue away from its proper environment (God’s character and revelation), you aren’t left with the same virtue you started with. You have a monster that bears almost no resemblance to its former shape or purpose.
The modern world . . . is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. They have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.
– G.K. Chesterton
We’ve all known friends who one day decided they needed to “start fresh.” So they grew their hair out and started offering didgeridoo workshops in their garage; they bought a farm and started raising Guinea Fowl; they abandoned their Honda at the edge of a wilderness in the hopes of finding their true selves lurking behind a bush somewhere.
Years later and you bump into them at a flea market. In the painful process of catching up you start to realize the awful truth; they desperately want you to believe their existential voyage has returned them to land whole and healthy. They’ve grown. They’ve changed. They’ve seen some things, man — they’ve done some stuff. So sure are they of their rebirth, we don’t have the heart to ask about their green yoga pants, neck beard, or why they’re missing an ear.
Wandering alone isn’t good for anyone. That includes virtues.
Stark Raving Virtues
If you want to know what a virtue gone mad looks like, look no further than one of the million “isms” staggering around with foam dripping from their mouths.
Environmentalism, for example. Ostensibly, NetZero fanciers want us to believe they’re the last line of defence against an imminent carbon apocalypse. According to the UN, we’re already “at least one degree Celsius above preindustrial levels and close to what scientists warn would be ‘an unacceptable risk.’”
Now, there’s already just enough vagueness in that statement for me to never want to leave it alone with someone I care about. But don’t you find “unacceptable risk” to be a fascinating choice of words? It almost feels like I’ve heard that exact phrase used in a different context, but that also involved experts and suffering. Questions arise from the shadowy recesses of memory and start chattering frantically at me: What criteria renders a risk unacceptable? What worldview do the individuals assessing risks hold to? What will the human cost be of responding to risks deemed to be unacceptable?
To be clear, my problem isn’t conscientiousness. My problem is the state attempting to legislate conscientiousness. This is a problem because:
A secular state is only concerned with expanding its power.
Without God, all the aims, operations, and policies of the state trend towards this singular end (Psalm 2:2).